It was really enlightening for me when my camera was stolen, then recovered. The police, after receiving my permission to do so, thoroughly analyzed the pictures the (really stupid) thieves took of them committing other crimes, and the one I had direct contact with explained how they adjusted the incorrect timestamps from the pictures according to the incorrect time of the camera's clock (not rocket science, I know, but pretty decent deductive reasoning for a cop:-)
They correlated the corrected timestamps of the pictures with burglary reports, and they also went to the places in the pictures to inform victims who didn't yet know they had been robbed.
But what really impressed me about this was that they requested permission before searching my camera (especially since I was the victim and not a suspect.)
If you are talking about starting college, it's a 2009 concern already. I realize that it's not January yet, but next week is dead weak for the Fall 08 semester, and we are deep into planning and budgeting for Spring 09.
Quite often, when I steer people toward things like Spybot S&D, AVG Free, and Firefox extensions like ABP and NoScript, they reject them. *shrug*. There seems to be an intersection between people who come to me for advice, people who are paranoid about "viruses", and people who don't listen to what I tell them.
These days, I think I would propose not accepting students into the major who can't show, by the time they are a freshman in college, significant programming ability in at least two different computer languages.
We don't take music majors who can't play an instrument, and we don't take math majors who are not at least ready for calculus. (We do take English majors who are barely literate but I think that's an accident:-)
Seriously, if you waited until college to start learning to program computers, you've wasted half your life already, and are *far* behind your competition.
Offer introductory courses for non-majors, or accept community college intro credits. But don't even offer a 'first year' course in programming for CS majors. There shouldn't be a CS major who needs any such thing. It's 2009, not 1979.
>I'll bet half the students wrap their C code in a class and think they're done.
I agree, until they fail the first few assignments. They learn. I've witnessed it time and time again, tutoring C and Java students. My school definitely teaches object design semantics with Java, making quite sure that the student learns and applies OO methodologies and can justify their work. We also teach C from a Unix system software point of view, and assembly from a chip architecture point of view, and then a somewhat academic, comparative approach to logic, functional, and domain specific languages. Language electives are offered, which vary. Students do not graduate from this program with any confusion about how different paradigms are applied for different kinds of problems.
That said, the first semester has a pre-major introductory course using Java. It is designed to teach good habits, to expose the student to the environment of the department, to offer a fun project that requires the student to design and build something independently, and frankly, to weed out those who are unlikely to survive what is a pretty challenging and very competitive CS program. Basically, you have to do no worse than a "B" in any math or computing course in your first year, or you won't be in the program.
A significant linux deployment project was once abandoned by a client of mine because it was impossible to spec a PCI 802.11/g card. There's no way to identify a product meaningfully, and no way to make the order repeatable. The few vendors who will guarantee linux support for a device, would only do so at an unacceptable price, and it was clear that they had no better way of guaranteeing it than the consumer did.
I know there have been a few cards that have stable chipsets (e.g., certain 3COM models). This doesn't really help the situation.
The wireless-compatability HOWTO is good for a laugh. There are devices listed that were only available for a short time, only in certain countries, and many devices that, given the same part number, get you several completely different cards.
I lost count of the number of times I was referred to that list when shopping for a vendor that would guarantee delivery and repeatable support of a card that would work.
What really stunk about the whole thing was that wireless internet was fast becoming "the killer app" for computing in many sectors, and Linux missed the boat. You can say it's not "linux's fault" but, why in the hell aren't the people who got rich off Linux, also sitting on the boards of some of these companies? Or at least, competing with them so that it's not possible, business-wise, to be openly hostile to Linux developers? Not "supportive", mind you, just not flatly hostile please. It's as if the directors of Broadcom used their leverage in an active campaign to keep Linux off portable computers.
Lye soap was antibacterial too -- the lipids from the hog fat bind to bacteria and they wash away... that's how the consumer antibacterial soaps work, only with Triclosan instead of lard.
If you really want to be completely antiseptic, put a Betadine surgical scrub dispenser by your sink, and follow the scrub protocol.
I had a house with bare copper, just wrapped around insulating posts. Of course I replaced it, but what was terrifying about this was that because of the time the house was built, or rather, had electric wire added to it, it was not a code violation.
I now think twice before going into attics or crawlspaces in old houses.
I would suggest XSLT, because it has obvious real-world applications that make the endeavor of learning it not just an academic one.
I would also recommend taking a few simple algorithms and implementing them in Haskell, ML and Scheme. I would also suggest doing the same thing in, say, C or Perl but limiting yourself to a pure functional model.
One of the most enlightening courses I took dealt with lambda calculus as its own idiom, distinct from applications to computer science, but the material would make for some awfully dry recreational reading.
I'd somewhat enjoy being accused of stealing my own copper by the recycling shop owner, provided he has some assets. After the judge awards them to me and I liquidate his scrap business, I'll take a vacation. PLEASE falsely accuse me of a felony with no evidence. I'll see to it that your false statements to the Police and the DA are properly recorded and used against you in the most uncomfortable ways imaginable.
Take out an ad with your crib notes. What's high school calc these days? Single derivatives and definite integrals? I have a problem getting perspective on that stuff, since it seems so easy in hindsight. No idea what you'd put on a cheat sheet. And of course you'd have to be steggy about it, since the teacher would be wise. Dumb idea, wouldn't work, sorry:-)
>No. Supposing Obama died of cardiac arrest and Biden died or refused to take office, the current sitting Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, would >become president until a new president qualifies. (The specifics of how a new president qualifies are unspecified -- this would be left up to >Congress)
I don't know where you get that idea. If, say, the Speaker of the House becomes president, it's clearly "for keeps", until they leave office or the term expires. Congress doesn't get a take-back unless they make a case for impeachment. The 20th Amendment leaves it unspecified as to what happens if a President-Elect is merely incapacitated (or found to be ineligible, not going there) before inauguration day. If you read the testimony of Sen. Cornyn, you get the idea that succession amounts to a person taking the role of an "Acting President" where they don't actually become president, except by virtue of their *role*, and could be removed from office by removal from that role. Is Cornyn right? He makes a pretty good point about all the Cabinet members living in DC, but he sort of misses the point that if a nuclear strike took out all of DC, the question of "who is President?" would be pretty damned far down the list of important concerns for anyone.
There's also a potential reading of the 25th Amendment and Article II that could create this scenario: President and Vice President both killed. Before the Speaker of the House can be sworn in, House votes Commander Taco in as Speaker. Is the new President the person who was Speaker at the moment the President was killed? Or at the moment of the swearing in? Or does this move make Commander Taco ineligible and we move down the list?
If the list passes the Speaker and Senate pro-tem, and a Cabinet member takes office, can the House appoint a new Speaker who can replace that Cabinet member, and if that happens, is that person still President (I say yes,
And what happens if the President is merely wounded, incapacitated, but the Vice President is killed?
At this point it's a foregone conclusion although still speculative, that Obama is the President-Elect -- remember that the election is still two weeks away. Maybe they will all vote for Ron Paul or Xenu.
>I think it can even be illegal to give legal advice
In the United States at least, you think wrong. As a thought experiment, describe how a law making it illegal to give "legal advice" could pass First Amendment muster.
It's not just in simple suffix and prefix usage, either. There are modifier forms that are legal, if perhaps slightly archaic, that while correct will not have explicit entries in a dictionary. I once had a big argument about the word "schedular", in the sense of "make sure you tend to your schedular duties." It's complicated, because it's an etymological principle that allows it, and even though I am right, I lost the argument because "schedular" had no entry in the dictionary the other person was using. I didn't remain at that job much longer. (I don't work well with people who cannot ever admit any possibility that they could be wrong.)
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It was really enlightening for me when my camera was stolen, then recovered. The police, after receiving my permission to do so, thoroughly analyzed the pictures the (really stupid) thieves took of them committing other crimes, and the one I had direct contact with explained how they adjusted the incorrect timestamps from the pictures according to the incorrect time of the camera's clock (not rocket science, I know, but pretty decent deductive reasoning for a cop :-)
They correlated the corrected timestamps of the pictures with burglary reports, and they also went to the places in the pictures to inform victims who didn't yet know they had been robbed.
But what really impressed me about this was that they requested permission before searching my camera (especially since I was the victim and not a suspect.)
If you are talking about starting college, it's a 2009 concern already. I realize that it's not January yet, but next week is dead weak for the Fall 08 semester, and we are deep into planning and budgeting for Spring 09.
Quite often, when I steer people toward things like Spybot S&D, AVG Free, and Firefox extensions like ABP and NoScript, they reject them. *shrug*. There seems to be an intersection between people who come to me for advice, people who are paranoid about "viruses", and people who don't listen to what I tell them.
These days, I think I would propose not accepting students into the major who can't show, by the time they are a freshman in college, significant programming ability in at least two different computer languages.
We don't take music majors who can't play an instrument, and we don't take math majors who are not at least ready for calculus. (We do take English majors who are barely literate but I think that's an accident :-)
Seriously, if you waited until college to start learning to program computers, you've wasted half your life already, and are *far* behind your competition.
Offer introductory courses for non-majors, or accept community college intro credits. But don't even offer a 'first year' course in programming for CS majors. There shouldn't be a CS major who needs any such thing. It's 2009, not 1979.
>I'll bet half the students wrap their C code in a class and think they're done.
I agree, until they fail the first few assignments. They learn. I've witnessed it time and time again, tutoring C and Java students. My school definitely teaches object design semantics with Java, making quite sure that the student learns and applies OO methodologies and can justify their work. We also teach C from a Unix system software point of view, and assembly from a chip architecture point of view, and then a somewhat academic, comparative approach to logic, functional, and domain specific languages. Language electives are offered, which vary. Students do not graduate from this program with any confusion about how different paradigms are applied for different kinds of problems.
That said, the first semester has a pre-major introductory course using Java. It is designed to teach good habits, to expose the student to the environment of the department, to offer a fun project that requires the student to design and build something independently, and frankly, to weed out those who are unlikely to survive what is a pretty challenging and very competitive CS program. Basically, you have to do no worse than a "B" in any math or computing course in your first year, or you won't be in the program.
I know a somewhat computer-illiterate choir director who uses Lilypond to set music for her church choir.
And I know plenty of non-comp-sci dweebs who are power users of GIMP.
Pixar is known to have used AL.
There's three for you, and while none are the commercial/boxed consumer product you're looking for, they are all very much real world implementations.
Broadcom couldn't do a worse job even if they devoted ten percent of their marketing budget towards actively opposing Linux.
A significant linux deployment project was once abandoned by a client of mine because it was impossible to spec a PCI 802.11/g card.
There's no way to identify a product meaningfully, and no way to make the order repeatable. The few vendors who will guarantee linux support for a device, would only do so at an unacceptable price, and it was clear that they had no better way of guaranteeing it than the consumer did.
I know there have been a few cards that have stable chipsets (e.g., certain 3COM models). This doesn't really help the situation.
The wireless-compatability HOWTO is good for a laugh. There are devices listed that were only available for a short time, only in certain countries, and many devices that, given the same part number, get you several completely different cards.
I lost count of the number of times I was referred to that list when shopping for a vendor that would guarantee delivery and repeatable support of a card that would work.
What really stunk about the whole thing was that wireless internet was fast becoming "the killer app" for computing in many sectors, and Linux missed the boat. You can say it's not "linux's fault" but, why in the hell aren't the people who got rich off Linux, also sitting on the boards of some of these companies? Or at least, competing with them so that it's not possible, business-wise, to be openly hostile to Linux developers? Not "supportive", mind you, just not flatly hostile please. It's as if the directors of Broadcom used their leverage in an active campaign to keep Linux off portable computers.
QA and project management costs are aggregated into a single product, so it's presumably less expensive in terms of manufacturing overhead.
Lye soap was antibacterial too -- the lipids from the hog fat bind to bacteria and they wash away... that's how the consumer antibacterial soaps work, only with Triclosan instead of lard.
If you really want to be completely antiseptic, put a Betadine surgical scrub dispenser by your sink, and follow the scrub protocol.
I had a house with bare copper, just wrapped around insulating posts. Of course I replaced it, but what was terrifying about this was that because of the time the house was built, or rather, had electric wire added to it, it was not a code violation.
I now think twice before going into attics or crawlspaces in old houses.
I would suggest XSLT, because it has obvious real-world applications that make the endeavor of learning it not just an academic one.
I would also recommend taking a few simple algorithms and implementing them in Haskell, ML and Scheme. I would also suggest doing the same thing in, say, C or Perl but limiting yourself to a pure functional model.
One of the most enlightening courses I took dealt with lambda calculus as its own idiom, distinct from applications to computer science, but the material would make for some awfully dry recreational reading.
Use a CAPTCHA. End of scripted bids, scripted sniping, and anything else that removes the human element from the process.
I'd somewhat enjoy being accused of stealing my own copper by the recycling shop owner, provided he has some assets. After the judge awards them to me and I liquidate his scrap business, I'll take a vacation.
PLEASE falsely accuse me of a felony with no evidence. I'll see to it that your false statements to the Police and the DA are properly recorded and used against you in the most uncomfortable ways imaginable.
>if he does not have an invoice for every atom of cooper on his truck he can be charged with cooper theft.
What country is this, where someone is presumed guilty? Cooper?
>Hell, there's even a guy who plays guitar with no arms! Granted, it's mostly Tom Petty songs, but still ;)
That guy is in San Diego all the time. I've seen him a lot. He can play pretty much anything you request.
Take out an ad with your crib notes. What's high school calc these days? Single derivatives and definite integrals? I have a problem getting perspective on that stuff, since it seems so easy in hindsight. No idea what you'd put on a cheat sheet. And of course you'd have to be steggy about it, since the teacher would be wise. Dumb idea, wouldn't work, sorry :-)
I've seen people play computer golf games. I've even seen people watch golf on TV. *shrug*.
I wish I had mod points. I also wish I had a few L-series Canon lenses (or even just one!). My camera body is WAY better than my lens budget allows.
>No. Supposing Obama died of cardiac arrest and Biden died or refused to take office, the current sitting Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, would
>become president until a new president qualifies. (The specifics of how a new president qualifies are unspecified -- this would be left up to
>Congress)
I don't know where you get that idea. If, say, the Speaker of the House becomes president, it's clearly "for keeps", until they leave office or the term expires. Congress doesn't get a take-back unless they make a case for impeachment. The 20th Amendment leaves it unspecified as to what happens if a President-Elect is merely incapacitated (or found to be ineligible, not going there) before inauguration day. If you read the testimony of Sen. Cornyn, you get the idea that succession amounts to a person taking the role of an "Acting President" where they don't actually become president, except by virtue of their *role*, and could be removed from office by removal from that role. Is Cornyn right? He makes a pretty good point about all the Cabinet members living in DC, but he sort of misses the point that if a nuclear strike took out all of DC, the question of "who is President?" would be pretty damned far down the list of important concerns for anyone.
There's also a potential reading of the 25th Amendment and Article II that could create this scenario: President and Vice President both killed. Before the Speaker of the House can be sworn in, House votes Commander Taco in as Speaker. Is the new President the person who was Speaker at the moment the President was killed? Or at the moment of the swearing in? Or does this move make Commander Taco ineligible and we move down the list?
If the list passes the Speaker and Senate pro-tem, and a Cabinet member takes office, can the House appoint a new Speaker who can replace that Cabinet member, and if that happens, is that person still President (I say yes,
And what happens if the President is merely wounded, incapacitated, but the Vice President is killed?
At this point it's a foregone conclusion although still speculative, that Obama is the President-Elect -- remember that the election is still two weeks away. Maybe they will all vote for Ron Paul or Xenu.
A gallon of wine with a drop of piss is a gallon of piss. QED.
>I think it can even be illegal to give legal advice
In the United States at least, you think wrong. As a thought experiment, describe how a law making it illegal to give "legal advice" could pass First Amendment muster.
>I agree completely with you Millennium. I spent a year teaching math in a high school as an emergency higher
As a what?
>What about people like me, that can actually play guitar!!
I just accept that I'm much better at guitar than at Guitar Hero, and let it go.
On the other hand, I'm better at guitar than at air guitar, and that really bothers me.
It's not just in simple suffix and prefix usage, either. There are modifier forms that are legal, if perhaps slightly archaic, that while correct will not have explicit entries in a dictionary. I once had a big argument about the word "schedular", in the sense of "make sure you tend to your schedular duties." It's complicated, because it's an etymological principle that allows it, and even though I am right, I lost the argument because "schedular" had no entry in the dictionary the other person was using. I didn't remain at that job much longer. (I don't work well with people who cannot ever admit any possibility that they could be wrong.)